Thursday, March 16, 2017

A Path To A Middle Class Income In Five Years

I've been writing the book since the last blog post. As you might expect, it's a lot of work. It is not a bunch of blog posts turned into a book, although the core of it is a re-written and expanded section on how to start a game store, complete with numbers and examples.

A bunch of meat is then hung off those bones, such as marketing, selling online, third place theory and the cafe model, and similar themes you've probably read here before, completely re-written. A blog post is a nugget of ideas, but it's rarely a starting point for writing a book chapter. In fact, it has messed up my writing style quite a bit. Lets just say I'm brief.

The book is essentially two parts, a how-to book on opening a successful game store, and a narrative portion of my personal experiences doing so. This is stuff I only share with close friends and fellow store owners. According to my buddy who has written a personal finance book, the book could have the sub title: A path to a middle class income in five years. That's kind of sexy in a mass market way. You've got a path towards a real, sustainable future in this book, and you've got a narrative that hopefully makes you think twice before starting. Or maybe I'm just crazy and you'll see that on display.

The narrative parts are the behind the scenes of starting a small business, the fear and loathing, the sense of freedom, the crazy things that happen along the way. If you already own a store or are just curious about starting a small business, this narrative part is likely the appeal of the book. I honestly can't read a book on starting a business without falling asleep. The narrative portion should cure your insomnia. When I ask people outside of the trade, they want to hear more about this stuff.

I've been posting teasers on Facebook. Here are some of the sections I've written. Most have been re-written after posting, but I'll post the draft versions for now. I've completed most of the how-to and I'm about a third of the way through the narrative. Then it will likely get thrown in a blender and re-written to some degree. That's my guess. I hope to finish by the end of April so we can have a book by the end of the year. Gameplaywright is my publisher on this. They're a small publishing house in the game trade.